I Know
by LadyPrimrose
Summary: ADMM and RLNT. Two different couples, in two different times. Can their love survive such troubling times?


Author's Note: This is a response to Jess's angst challenge on the MMAD boards. The poem belongs to a friend of hers, and the characters, obviously, are JKR's. The poem is in bold, the RL/NT (taking place during OoTP) is in plain text, and the AD/MM (taking place during the time of Grindelwald) is in italics.

**You're not able to look at me.  
You won't hold my gaze.  
I'm tuning you out,  
Everything is in a haze.**

"This simply won't work."

"_This simply won't work."_

Remus looked at the young woman in front of her, so impossibly…not pure, not innocent…but so impossibly young.

Tonks simply stared at him. It was as though she was looking at the room through a thick fog, or through a sheet of cheesecloth. Everything felt smothered in the sheet heartbreak of the situation.

"You are attracted to me." She said. It wasn't a question, but a statement. It wasn't bold, but said in a dead tone of voice. A voice that knew she couldn't allow herself to feel at the moment.

**I'm staring you down.  
You're yelling at me.  
If only we could runaway;  
Then we could be free.**

_Albus had not lost his temper since he was eight years old, and Nicholas had broken his favorite AstronoScop_e_. He had never shouted, but to get the attention of someone far away. _

_But she could always drive him to do things he never did before. And here he was, losing his patience and yelling at the one person he dared to love above all others. _

"_It isn't safe, Minerva. How do you think I would feel, if Grindewald went after you? If it was you lying dead upon the sheets? Your blood running down the drain?" He ran his fingers through his beard in frustration. "What do you think that would do to me?"_

"_I never took you for a selfish man, Albus!" Minerva fired back, her Irish eyes flaring with impassioned argument. "How will it affect YOU? How would YOU feel? I love you, Albus! I love you! And I know you love me. Was it not you who said we could always do with more love in the world?" _

"_I WILL NOT PUT YOU IN DANGER!"_

"_We can leave. We can leave this place, Albus. We can be free in our love, forever."_

_Albus looked down at the young woman before him. She was not innocent, no. Her eyes had seen too much evil and bloodshed to be considered innocent. But she was young. So impossibly young. _

**You finish speaking.  
I heave a loud sigh.  
Everything is clear again.  
Despite the need, I can't cry.  
**

Tonks picked up her bag and left Remus's apartment. It was over, she thought. Suddenly, everything seemed to clear up, as though she had just gotten over a cold. She no longer felt the giddy fever of his near-ness. No longer felt the groggy, teary-eyed congestion of unrequited love.

She felt nothing. Nothing but the cool night air upon her non-blushing cheeks. The wind in her mousey brown hair. The nothing-ness that replaced her thoughts of Remus as she made her way down the steps.

There was a painful relief in it being over—no, in it never beginning. For she must remember, any relationship she had felt had been in her head, in her fantasies.

She felt like she should be crying, but she was numb with the emptiness of what could have been.

**I don't want you to leave  
But you think you should go.  
You tell me you love me.  
I tell you I know.**

_He knew she wanted him to stay, but every well-honed instinct told him to leave. Every moment in her presence was a moment he may use against her—a memory he could use to torture her, to manipulate him—to hurt and kill. _

_He had lost honorable people. He had lost friends, colleagues, a sister. His beautiful, cherub-smiled sister. But he could not lose her. He could not lose Minerva. _

"_Albus!" She had run after him. _

"_Minerva, this is not a romance novel!" He did not want her to run after him, did not want her to put her arms around him, but knew that she would. _

_And she did. _

"_I love you." He could hear the tears in her voice. _

"_I know." He replied, and they crumpled to the floor, his arms around her hips, and lips upon her neck. _

"Tonks!" Remus cried. She turned toward the top of the stairs. He was running toward her, but she dared not allow her heart to leap.

"Don't go." He said, in a voice nothing short of begging, as his arms wrapped around her. He had held her before—as a mentor, as a friend, as a comforter. But this was their first real embrace. This was the kind of embrace that only ended in the physical world.

"I love you." He said.

"I know." She replied.


End file.
